Taylor Handley stars as Johnny Miller, a bright and ambitious teen whose nose-to-the-grindstone attitude seems to bother his drunken dad. This generational conflict ends rather quickly, when dad blows his brains out right in front of our hero.

Flash forward one year. Johnny's just out of rehab, and his mom (Gail O'Grady) has married another man (D.W. Moffett) and transplanted them to Palm Springs, Calif., a place better known for retirees and golf courses than teen-centric action.

Johnny finds himself intrigued by a mysterious girl named Greta (Amber Heard), whose secrets may be as sad as she is beautiful. In fact, John's awkward new friend Cliff (Michael Cassidy) blurts out that Greta's last boyfriend is no longer among the living.

The brainchild of Kevin Williamson ("Scream," "Dawson's Creek"), "Palms" teems with hyperarticulate teens who toss off brittle bon mots like hand grenades. One of Johnny's new pals dismisses their town as filled with "Grays, gays and streets named after dead people."

Ouch.

Tonight's best line belongs to Sharon Lawrence ("NYPD Blue"), who plays Cliff's plastic-surgery-obsessed mother. Praising her latest rhinoplasty, she exults, "It looks like the nose two noses ago."

In a world without new episodes of "The O.C." and a summer to go before "Desperate Housewives" resumes, viewers may flock to "Palms" just to enjoy dialogue like that.

What would the Wild West be without its mythology? Adam and Jamie turn their goofball "Mythbusters" (9 p.m., Discovery) approach on the tall tales and sagebrush legend of Hollywood cowpokes.

For nostalgia of a more recent vintage, "The Real World" (10 p.m., MTV) hosts a reunion of "The Real World: Vegas."

Easy Riders and made men mingle in the documentary "Bikers and Mobsters" (10 p.m., National Geographic), narrated by Anthony LaPaglia, a look at an unlikely alliance that changed the face of Montreal's drug trade and inspired one of the biggest police crackdowns in Canadian history.

A prank has serious consequences in the repeat pilot episode of "Traveler" (9 p.m., ABC, TV-14). In a second episode (10 p.m.), Jay and Tyler escape to the Fog mansion to find it enshrouded in mystery.